Yes, social media and the web have allowed us to too-conveniently block any news or facts we disagree with, while also flooding us with enough of the opposite. But here's the thing... we've always had this ability. We've always been tricked and pulled and tweezed like this.

The emergence of fintech brings forth a new set of regulatory challenges as enforcement agencies and governments wrangle with a difficult question: How to create regulations for this new sector to keep the public safe -- without squashing innovation?

One morning, I noticed a man behind me acting rather strange. This bloke was a fairly standard looking late middle aged man, probably in his 50's or early 60's, regulation belly protruding from his unfashionable shirt and bland baseball hat from some town he had once visited now covering his humpty dumpty head. And he was, quite clearly, a Trump.

Have you ever tried fooling a dog into getting excited for the wrong thing? Perhaps testing their instincts by offering something boring to the tune of a tasty treat? It turns out that while they may very well be excited by the amped up sound of your voice, they are most likely on to your trick.

Imagine the horror of learning that the faux fur-trimmed coat you just purchased was not made from synthetic material, but dog or cat fur. Surprisingly, in Canada, this is not only a real possibility but one that is potentially legal.

I got a text from my teen at 8:52 yesterday morning. It was that text; the one you read about in news reports that usually come from the U.S. It doesn't come from one of your own children. The ones you promised yourself you would always protect. "Lockdown at school," then "Someone pulled a knife." Not much to go on, but enough to send that infamous chill down your spine. I wasn't far from school, so I raced over, my muddy dog still in the back seat, dreading what I knew I would find.

Media managers are wondering what went wrong. They are asking why journalism doesn't pay any more. If the solutions are hard to discern, they have only to look at the technology they so eagerly embrace. It's the digital technology. It has spread throughout many industries including journalism, like a virus.

At a time when our consumption of the news is at an all-time high, the very institutions at the heart of our news media are in crisis -- and demanding the attention of our political leaders. Postmedia combined newsrooms in Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary and Vancouver in a move that not only saw many talented and dedicated journalists pushed out the door, but also saw distinctive voices quieted.

Quebec Economy Minister Jacques Daoust announced that the Quebec government would be "investing" $1.3 billion in taxpayer money in Bombardier's beleaguered CSeries aircraft line, and promptly turned around to prod the new Trudeau government in Ottawa to pony up a similar contribution.

The true test of the Trudeau team's openness will come when actual decisions are being made, when real people start to object, when the human beings running the place start making mistakes. The national press gallery may be charmed for now, grateful that the Harper years of cold war are over. It will not last. Parliament Hill reporters are top professionals who will be ready to pounce when things inevitably go off the rails. When that happens, will the smiling ministers of day one remain available to be interrogated, challenged, or even hectored?

Think tanks, politicos and pundits regularly weigh in with how to improve Canadian healthcare. Such media coverage is often weighted. And journalists covering the issue often struggle on short timelines to gain enough knowledge to ask the critical questions. But that's about to change.

I should have known better. Generally, you need to offer some leeway for new kids on the block -- at least three months to work out kinks. But I didn't. Because at the time, I thought -- "Bumpy ride, be damned! Imma get me some Hotline Bling." Oh, how naively hopeful I was.

The CBC is facing significant challenges. There is the continued rise of the Internet and digital services like Netflix that are changing the broadcasting landscape. More and more content is consumed online. There are also long-standing challenges of competing against the U.S. entertainment giant to our south. With these challenges in mind, here is what I propose. It is important to have a strong and vibrant CBC, to tell our stories, to entertain and inform us as Canadians.

For the last 30 years or so, Canadians have repeatedly flagged healthcare as the most important national concern and the issue they want their political leaders to prioritize. Surveys and studies and polls and panels -- there have been plenty -- all come up with the same finding: Canadians care about healthcare.

Since teenage brains are literally neurobiologically different from adults, coupled with their fluctuating hormones, the way they process information also differs greatly from how we may process the very same things. This creates a situation where, when told not to wear something deemed inappropriate for that particular environment, while an adult may understand that it is simply a fashion issue within that specific circumstance, a teenager may perceive it on a chemical level as a personal threat to their entire identity and independence. As a result, they can become fiercely protective and hypersensitive to any potential threats made to their autonomy and are more likely to push the limits in response.

The Vice you may have once known has left the world of online hipster magazine and slowly transformed themselves into Vice Media, a brash and brave news organization with 30 offices worldwide and staff of 1,500.

While we should be shocked that these atrocities are committed, we should not be so shocked that they are committed within our borders, because this violence really is not as much of a "lone wolf" attack as we think. We are far more entrenched in this barbarous violence than we would have ourselves believe.

There will be others after Stewart, just like there have been others during Stewart. But it's not enough to be an activist, or to be annoying, or to be loud, or to just only occasionally hit the nail on the head, or whatever. Stewart was often left of someone on the right, often right of someone on the left.